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One to One

With Cindy Martin
Transgender Forum Publisher

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August 31, 1998

I
FGE's announcement that it was cancelling the 1999 convention in Orlando was clearly the right thing to do. You can't lose boatloads of money and not get the message eventually.

But, I'm very sorry to see this happen.

Back in the late 1980s, the IFGE conventions were the best of a very small number of events for our community. As such, they were an extremely important part of "coming out" for many, many people. They were decently organized and had strong, diverse programs that were well-attended. So what happened?

Competition has played some role. The community still loves conventions, just look at TGF's own Events listings as evidence of their continuing popularity. Many of these events have been going on for years now and are tightly organized affairs with experienced people staging them. By comparison, and people definitely made comparisons, IFGE events were run sloppily and with too few decent programs. They were also pricey and complaints from attendees about a lack of value for the money got louder and louder each year. That is never good for attendance.

Early on, IFGE decided to rotate conventions to different cities around the country. It was also decided that while IFGE would run the convention, the local host organization would be relied upon for providing volunteers, getting some of the presenters and organizing activities outside the main convention program. Both these ideas made a lot of sense, but they also caused a lot of headaches.

Try staging a convention for a few hundred people from thousands of miles away. Then do it with volunteers. Anyone who works with volunteers knows that it takes extreme diplomacy and patience, and unfortunately, sometimes you get what you pay for. Volunteers will flake, it's just a fact of life, and if a volunteer flakes on lining up a presenter or arranging a nightclub excursion, what are you going to do? Fire her?

But IFGE's conventions had another problem, one that is endemic to the organization: a lack focus.

IFGE's conventions, even great ones like those staged in Philadelphia and San Francisco, were hybrids. They were part professional events, part training events, part fun and games and part political. This was fine in the early days, but in recent years the lack of focus has hurt. Some people showed up looking for a big party. Others wanted to improve their professional understanding of the transgender phenomenon, while still others expected lots of seminars on the more serious aspects of transitioning. Maybe a professional event organizer with paid staff could pull off something like this, though it would be a huge challenge, but there was no way a small, underfunded organization like IFGE could consistently do it with volunteers.

So how do you fix the IFGE convention? Should anyone even bother? I say, yes and here is my modest proposal for the IFGE 2000 Convention:

1. Stage it in Boston. Keep the event near the Waltham, Mass. headquarters. It should be easier to recruit quality volunteers, there would definitely be better command and control and, eventually, lower costs if facilities can be guaranteed return business.

2. Drop the "How to" Seminars, Focus on professional and leadership training. This means the crowd will be smaller, and that more non-TG "helping" professionals will be part of the core attendees but IFGE is the International Foundation for Gender Education and should live up to it's name. A smaller, prestigious event, should cost less and could generate some badly needed revenues.

3. Rotate the IFGE Awards ceremonies to major conventions elsewhere. These awards are highly coveted and prestigious. Most local event organizers would be happy to showcase them along with their own local awards.

No one should ever forget or minimize the contribution that IFGE conventions have made to this community. These events, which were often covered by local "straight" media, helped foster historic changes in public attitudes towards us. The conventions were responsible for opening many places up to this community and emboldened people to start events in their own cities. Many of us met each other for the first time at IFGE and, even at their worst, an IFGE was still great fun for most of us.

There is still an important place in this community for a "national" convention and IFGE, for it's many faults, is still the right organization to stage it. It must be different from what it was before, but different might turn out to be better.

Hell, they might even make a little money.



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